The Void Within: Void of Love
by Madhog thy Master
Summary: And so... The Void shall be filled. Last episode of "The Void Within" mini-saga. Song: "Burn" by The Cure.
1. Chapter 1

**VOID OF LOVE**

* * *

**1.**

_**Don't look, don't look**_

_**the shadows breathe**_

_**whispering me away from you**_

_**don't wake at night to watch her sleep**_

_**you know that you will always see**_

_**this trembling, adored, tousled bird-mad girl **_

* * *

_**The dream was always the same… He was engulfed in darkness. Alone as usual. Terrified as he rightfully should be.**_

_**An unnatural coldness devouring his own flesh and soul… Utter Solitude and Despair were the key words.**_

_**Trapped in this infinite loneliness, he felt his inner emptiness even more deeply… **_

_**Try… Try as you might… Try to escape, little boy… Try to fill your soul with feelings… **_

_**It was all useless. The only emotions he had left were the ones who caused his namesake pain in the first place…**_

_**The sickness became a cancer… And for this illness there wasn't any cure…**_

_**No Happiness.**_

_**No Love.**_

_**Just… Pure… Nothingness.**_

_**But still… Something was about to happen… A light came out of nowhere and suddenly, the Darkness was gone…**_

_**It wasn't just any normal source of light… No… It was a flame… It was a blaze… A blaze of Passion… A blaze of Life…**_

_**Was her name… Hope?**_

_**And the flame was changing form… Becoming Her, once again.**_

_**His blazing princess… His desperate object of desire… His lifeline.**_

_**The sour being known as Void, tried to reach her… To hug her… But he couldn't…**_

_**She was always too distant… **_

_**Do not leave him again, oh Queen of Flames… Do not depart from him, oh Cat princess… Legendary creature of fire… Burning beauty of sadness…**_

_**He needs you… In order to fill his inner hole… In order to live…**_

_**In order to love.**_

_**And now she faded away… Leaving him all alone… Once again.**_

_**Only this time… Someone else was there for him.**_

_**The Seedrian slowly turned his head towards his guest… This mysterious God who claimed to be this planet's very soul and will… A creature who defied the inter-dimensional barriers and who could be everywhere and every time… A creature that could reach his wounded mind thanks to a rather unwilling vessel… A certain black hedgehog who, somehow, someway, found himself to be this demon's messenger.**_

_**His new master.**_

_**The ancient God known as Dark Gaia, the reflection of this world's Darkness, spoke to the plant boy with his low and ominous voice…**_

**"_So… Do we have a deal?"_**

_**A little while ago, this beast has made a proposition to the young Seedrian… He promised to help him finding his princess again… He had the powers to allow such task… And all the lovesick plant boy had to do in return… Was to retrieve a certain item for him… An item that has been encased in another dimension… A dimension that Dark Gaia's influence couldn't reach…**_

_**Because that particular dimension was born from pure nothingness.**_

_**The being also promised to grant the unfortunate boy with his lost memories… In change of his eternal obedience.**_

_**Void pondered about it for a while… And then, he made a decision.**_

**"_We do have a deal… Master."_**

_**A rather predictable one… **_

_**And so, once again, his life became someone else's property…**_

_**All in the name of Love.**_

_**The indescribable, gruesome serpent like demon seemed amused by his new servant's choice.**_

**"_Very well… Rest well for now. When thou shalt awake, your journey shalt begin."_**

_**Void nodded and then… Everything disappeared.**_

_**And thus, this story begins and I shall narrate it…**_

_**Who am I?**_

_**I'm this world's Love… And, hopefully, I shall save this tormented soul from the abyss he fell in…**_

_**From his own Hell.**_

_**From his own emptiness…**_

_**Let us commence.**_

* * *

For the casual observer, the smell would have seemed unbearable… But for this particular individual, it was a heavenly scent.

Humans tend to be strange creatures… They used to contradict themselves fairly often and change their believes or ideas even more times.

But one of the few things they all seem to agree about… Was that nobody liked pickle sandwiches.

Well… Nobody, except this old looking docent.

To say that professor Pickle had an insane passion for those namesake hoagies... Would have still been an utter understatement.

He stood still, in his own office, in the prestigious Spagonia University, holding the aforementioned loath of bread with that rather smelly pseudo-vegetable inside of it…

One would have said he was contemplating the religiously importance of the moment, like if the sandwich was his Lord and Master, and the human, his loyal subject and worshipper.

After a few minutes of this rather pointless pagan ritual, Pickle finally bit his prized meal and slowly, but gingerly, started chewing it… Tasting the awesome consistence of the namesake vegetables.

To the eyes of his current guest (as well as everyone else's for that matter) such spectacle looked terribly awful and, definitely, hunger killing.

After savoring his so-called delicious meal, the old rector turned his head over his guest.

"My, my… Where did my manners go? How can I help you, young lady?" He asked.

The "young lady", as the man referred to her, was a human girl around her thirties… A G.U.N. agent, for being more precisely.

She was there for a precise reason and, judging by the badge she was eagerly showing to her host, that reason was not personal amusement.

"I'm agent Topaz of the Guardian Unit of Nations… I need to ask you something about your son… Miles "Tails" Prower." She demanded rather than asked, authority was showed on her voice.

Naturally, Pickle was expecting that, he wasn't a fool, for human standards, I mean.

He smiled at the woman and gently motioned her to sit.

Over the next few hours he would have gladly explained to her how he did NOT know of what his adopted son was accused, how he did NOT have a clue of his current location and how he did NOT have anything to do with the dangerous black eyed alien…

Hidden in a convenient subterranean dungeon under Pickle's office, Tails was so glad that the human did pretend NOT to know a lot of things.

Thanks to his enhanced foxy ears he could clearly hear the conversation both his foster parent and his noisy guest were having. The vulpine smiled within himself, if there's a thing he learned in all of his young yet, intense life was that certain humans were awfully good in telling lies… Especially when they have to protect something (or someone) they considered crucially important… In this case, a loving father and mentor was protecting his non-blood related son and another guy who's been almost rolled by the man's very car more than a month ago.

In the utter silence of their refuge, both Tails and his forced guest, Void, were trying to relax their respective nerves by playing a random chess game they happened to find around.

And, of course, the two-tailed fox kit was winning 30 matches in a row…

To tell the truth, the Seedrian didn't look very involved in the game… His gaze was distant and so was his mind, he hadn't muttered a single word since his awakening from that latest, nasty dream.

This fact was worrying the Kitsune a lot. He could only imagine what his would be friend (or inter-dimensional son, if want to put it paradoxical) was going through in his damaged mind…

The pain and the guilt for hurting and / or killing people inadvertently…

The sorrow caused by his emotional emptiness and lost love…

And the fact that he was all alone in a world so different from the one he came from… The one he had almost no memories of.

Tails used to be an empathic person who cared about others' feelings… That was one of the reasons of why most of the female students of the university had a weakness towards his regards… Another reason was his natural pet like fluffy cuteness.

A thing that he personally hated… And so the male students did.

"Tails? Can I ask you a question." The sudden voice of his fellow chess player asked.

The young vulpine abruptly snapped out from his latest Hong Kong express of thoughts.

"What is it, Void?" He replied almost in a cheerful tone, visibly happy about his companion's burst of sociality… He would regret it a second later.

Void's expressionless eyes seemed full of doubts and fears yet, determined and focused at the same time… A behavior he had in common with his "father".

He spoke.

"Tell me… If you had ONE chance to regain what you've lost… One chance to escape from your mental and emotional miseries… To be happy again… Wouldn't you do anything in your power to have it back? Wouldn't you even KILL if necessary?"

And now… The kit found himself seriously scared… And unable to answer his question.

Void weakly smiled and answered for him.

"Of course you wouldn't… You're a wonderful and caring person and your soul is strong. You've managed to went through a lot of pain in your life and yet, there you are… Helping a complete stranger who caused the death of two people and seriously hurt the ones you loved…" A single tear rolled down from the boy's eyes. "… For what I can recall, the Tails from my original dimension… My father… Used to be as strong as you are…" He lowered his head, feeling somehow ashamed of himself. "… I wish I could be half as strong as you two are."

Tails couldn't take it anymore, without any advice or foreword, he rose from his seat and darted towards the plant boy… Hugging him tightly just the way he used to do with Sonic, his big brother, some time ago… Just the way a young kid would do to express his feelings to someone he cares about.

Strangely enough, Void was not taken aback by this… To be honest, he almost hoped this would happen so he could pretend that he was actually his father… His one and only father…

Despite being younger…

Despite being another Tails…

Despite the cruelty of this chaotic life.

He returned the embrace and hugged him back with his ugly hands… His so unlike him, ugly hands.

* * *

It was night. Tails was asleep on his spare bed… The other, however, wasn't.

Void was standing right in front the vulpine's bed, watching him sleep, trying with all his might not to cry… Not to wake him.

The time has come, for he to leave… To go looking for his past… For his lost love… And to fulfill his promise to his new master.

He closed his eyes, already feeling the disfiguring guilt of what he was about to do… He knew it will cause sufferance and pain… Death and demise… Most of all, he knew his course of action would utterly disappointed his two-tailed friend…

What other choices had he, though? It wasn't like he could decide not to proceed… The creature who claimed the ownership of his soul wouldn't let him escape… Like it or not, he was his agent… He's been gifted with just a fragment of the God's immense power and he would have been forced to hold such burden for Chaos knows how long.

He gave one last, sorrowful glance at the sleeping, serene form of the kit… Then he slowly turned and left the security of the dungeon and the university for good.

His last thoughts before his departing:

_**Please… Don't miss me, father... Hate me!**_

And then, he was gone.

* * *

Due to Dark Gaia's doing, Void's mind was slowly starting to regain some of his lost memories and now he knew his rather unique species had a name…

He was a Seedrian, the only anthropomorphic plant based life form in existence… He had a mother, her name was Cosmo but he didn't know anything else about her, he still couldn't remember her face clearly…

He had some unique powers, mostly related with nature and other plants… And, amazingly enough, he could read other people's soul through their eyes… Just like he did with this world's Tails earlier today.

This has been what his new master let him to remember for now… Other precious memories would have come as a reward for his accomplished chores, the demon promised.

In order to reach the ultimate goal of his mission, Void needed to travel through other dimensions… A thing that a mortal being like him, although being Chosen by Nature and Chaos, couldn't do without sacrificing his own life force due to the tremendous physical and temporal differences between universes… Or so he thought.

A creature like Dark Gaia, being the incarnation of this planet's will, existed contemporary in each and every dimension (even in Void's own), except of course, the one he had an interest towards… Therefore, the powers he gave to his unwilling agent would have, somehow, inexplicably and whatever-ly, protected him from sustaining damages…

All he needed now, in order to perform a successful time / space travel… Was chaos energy… And plenty of it.

And, thanks to his master's omniscient cognition, he now knew where to find it.

There were several things the various dimensions had in common with one another… They all had Chaos Emeralds… For whatever reason that no one cares about.

This dimension was no different and one of them was currently held inside a rather dangerous place… The G.U.N. base right outside Spagonia.

For any normal being, to get inside an hyper-protected military base such as this one, would have been considered an act of foolish self-murder or something like that… Void, however, was NOT a normal being… Especially, not now.

Being the source of all Darkness, Dark Gaia craved his strengths from the night… When Sonic and a rather unwilling Shadow, got just a glimpse of his power, they became werehogs… As ridiculous and inexplicable as it could seem, it just happened that way… Void, on the other hand, being granted with some more control over his current unwanted powers… Could do some more interesting things.

He braced himself and entered the base.

* * *

He was hearing nothing…

The screams of terror…

The noise of broken bones shattering through out soft and bloody flesh…

The pleads for mercy…

Nothing.

He saw nothing…

The blood…

The corpses…

The terror deformed faces…

Nothing.

His mind separated itself from his body during the whole… Unbearable… Twisted… Time.

He let his possessed physic to do everything. He didn't want to have anything to do with this massacre… There was a price to pay for having the necessary power to achieve certain seemingly impossible goals…

Human lives were part of it.

His master had a weakness for living souls… It was his caprice, one would say… Plus, he happened to despise mortals, mainly because they, instead of him, were absolutely free and yet, they wouldn't enjoy their own freedom because of their stubborn attachment to their precious rules and will to find a sense on everything… How he envied them for it, but of course, he would have never admitted it.

Through the link he had with Void's mind, he could see all of that beautiful spectacle… All the dead and all the destruction…

To bring destruction and sufferance over the world was his ultimate goal, after all… Simply because he had to… It was his role, to be the source of all Evil. To be Satan. To be Darkness.

It was something he never asked for in the first place, it just happened… And he would have carried on with his plans, no matter the prices…

This universe needed a dark side… In order to be a whole… Just like any living being.

Including his agent… Who, right now, was showing the full extent of his new dark side.

His claws were immensely huge, bigger and uglier than ever… His whole form was a few inches taller, his once green leaf hair were now bright white, unlike his eyes, and slightly longer… He didn't look feral like a werehog used to be, instead, he looked like a cursed angel of Death… A messenger of the apocalypse, one would say.

If he only would have had a single black wing and a ludicrously long sword, some videogame nerd would have probably asked his autograph…

He was covered in blood. Red, warm blood all over his mutated body.

His external expression looked glacial and emotionless… But internally, he was burning alive… The only thing that was pulling his sanity together was, yet again, her image…

Finally, he reached the room he (or rather it) was "looking" for… Slashing and killing around for… Mass murdering for… Suppressing his burning feelings for… You've got the angst of it all.

Once inside, there were two things that caught his attention almost immediately: the first was his former black cloaked vest, which he hastily retrieved and, once resumed his normal stature and appearance, put on, finally disposing of his awful street thug like tracksuit… The second thing happened to be a certain red gem he was looking for…

The Chaos Emerald was now his.

Without wasting anymore valuable time in mourning and feeling guilty for the death of a bunch of worthless supporting characters… Which will haunt him later, eventually… He summoned the required energy from the aforementioned jewel, now in his tight grasp…

And so, a spell he didn't even remember to know, came out from his mouth… From his lungs… From all of his being.

"CHAOS CONTROL!!!!" He yelled.

Some kind of a cheap looking cliché portal was opened in the space / time continuum and, without any further hesitation, the dark Seedrian entered it…

While doing so, another few memories found their way back in his mind… A proof of his master's appreciation, apparently.

With these brand new remembrances, he could now call his one and only love with her true name…

And so he did…

He called her name…

He screamed her name…

He was falling in the pit deeper and deeper, just for her…

His burning soul mate…

"I will find you… Blaze the Cat!"

And then, he just let the absolute randomness of these chaotic forces he drowned himself with… To drive him into the next world… And the next perils.

His destination? The Unknown.

… His mind still screaming.

* * *

_**Every night I burn**_

_**every night I call your name**_

_**every night I b**__**urn**_

_**every night I fall again **_


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

_**Don't talk of love 'cause shadows blur**_

_****_

Murmuring me away from you

Don't talk of worlds that never were

The end is always ever true

There's nothing you can ever say

Nothing you can ever do

* * *

_**There he was… Nowhere.**_

_**In the despairing nothingness between worlds… Between dimensions… Between emotions.**_

_**He's been traveled through all of it… All the sad shadows… Glimpses of other lands… Tears in the space / temporal continuum…**_

_**He could see all of it… He could feel all of it… He became part of it, even before he entered it.**_

_**The shadows engulfed his body and his soul as well, transporting him somewhere or some time… He wasn't fighting them… He embraced them… He just followed the current… **_

_**The current of time…**_

_**The current of space…**_

_**The current of sorrow and love…**_

_**Hopefully… The current that shall bring him to his final destination.**_

_**To Her… Or to Death… Which would come first.**_

_**In the midst of this hopelessness… He could watch the other universes… The other worlds passing besides him… Or vice-versa… Who knew?**_

_**He could see them, like if he was seeing through open windows… The aforementioned tears in this nothingness.**_

_**And so, he could see some of the endless possibilities this chaotic life was all about…**_

_**He first saw a world that looked so similar to his own… As far as he could remember, of course.**_

_**There was a great forest… With tall trees and full of life… Full of nature. And then… There was that city… That gruesome, lifeless, ominous iron made city.**_

_**And there was a madman who ruled that city… A bald, orange mustached, fat madman with demonic black and red eyes and a mechanical arm. The form of his head resembled the one of a pear.**_

_**He was laughing… Laughing like possessed… Laughing like the devil he seemed to be… Or chose to be.**_

_**He saw innocent anthropomorphic like creatures being put inside an horrible machine… And almost instantly turned into machines of their own… Robotizied slaves for the madman's army.**_

_**But that was not all… There was a group, hidden in the great forest, who was defiantly resisting against this crazy human…**_

_**Some of them looked so familiar in Void's eyes, even though he couldn't quite place them in his mind…**_

_**There was an half robotizied bunny girl with a peculiar accent but a very sweet voice… There was a fat looking walrus dressed like a mechanical geek… A rather coward coyote in a military outfit… A chipmunk lady with gorgeous red hair and a blue jacket…**_

_**Speaking of blue… There was that cobalt colored hedgehog… He could run very fast it seems… **_

_**Void had no doubts… That was that Sonic character he heard about… There was a version of him even in this dimension…**_

_**Only… He seemed a little bit smaller and goof looking than Void thought. He had a backpack on his shoulder from which he would occasionally pull out a golden glowing ring… Or a strange smelly hoagie with a sausage in it.**_

_**Strange…**_

_**And finally, Void saw him… This dimension's Tails. He looked slightly different from the one he already knew… He was smaller and his fur was more fluffy… His color was deep orange, almost brown, instead of the regular yellow-orange…**_

_**Among all, he seemed to be completely and utterly harmless… He had a childish behavior… The kind of behavior one would expect from children of his age… **_

_**In this dimension, it seems, he was not a warrior… Nor a mechanical genius… Just an innocent child who could fly… He was seen as nothing more than that…**_

_**And that bothered him, Void could say, it hurt him in ways that no one of the others could ever imagine…**_

_**That's why this kit did what he did… He flew away from his group… His surrogate family…**_

_**Right into the madman's grasp. **_

**"_No…" _**

_**Void was forced to witness everything…**_

**"_No…"_**

_**The cries… The torture… The beating and the blood…**_

**"_No…"_**

_**And ultimately… The robotization.**_

**"_NO!!!"_**

_**This Tails, this innocent child, was no more… Thanks to this war… Thanks to one man's madness… Thanks to other people's indifference.**_

_**And Void couldn't do anything to avoid it.**_

_**This dimension was doomed.**_

_**As this window closed, another was opened…**_

_**This new world seemed to be the result of some deranged childish mind… Its roads were twisted and contorted with constant loops and random… Well… Randomnities all over the place. The cities were deformed and preposterous… Not to mention its ridiculous inhabitants. **_

_**All in all, this entire world resembled a twisted surrealistic painting. On one of those improbable roads, two blurs were running like mad… A blue blur and, just a little behind, a brown one.**_

_**A little ahead from them, two peculiar figures were setting some kind of a ludicrous trap… Almost as ludicrous as these two individuals looked.**_

_**One was a tall, robotic chicken with a rather obnoxious and loud voice… The other was a small tank like, boiler like thingy with one of the most stupid facial expressions Void could ever imagine…**_

_**The trap was a cartoon classic: grab the food – fall into a pit with a Siberian mechanical tiger in it… And the food was, of course, a chilidog.**_

_**The two dumbots were snickering within themselves, already pre-tasting their success… **_

_**Suddenly, a blue hedgehog dressed like an inspector of some kind, asked the two of them if they had the regular authorization to place innocent chilidogs in the middle of the road with the sole purpose for attracting fast hedgehogs into deadly traps… **_

_**Realizing that they actually didn't have it… The two nincombots darted towards the aforementioned meal in order to remove it from the way… Only to fall into their own trap and getting disemboweled by a nasty robotic feline.**_

_**The hedgehog then dropped his camouflage reviling himself to be this dimension's Sonic the Hedgehog… His buddy, a younger version of the Tails Void knew, came out from his hiding spot and, along with his big hedgehog brother, darted away towards another adventure…**_

_**And the observing Seedrian could have swore he heard someone yelling how he hated a certain hedgehog…**_

_**A weird dimension, indeed… Too comical and light hearted to be real.**_

_**Real life was harder than that, as the lonely voyager sadly knew… He couldn't help but smile at this sight, though.**_

_**Sometimes, a good old laugh was the best of medicines.**_

_**Moving on… The next window showed him a peculiar land… Or better, a non-land… As a matter of fact, this world used to have floating islands and cities placed above the clouds… Far above from the forgotten dark ghost of earth's past civilizations…**_

_**He could almost immediately locate this planet's heroes… Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower and… A certain red dreadlocked echidna with a stupid cowboy hat on his head… Fighting against a metallic copy of Sonic and its creator… A funny looking, rotund man with enormous brown mustaches that covered grand part of his face…**_

_**And there was a cat like girl around… Wait! A cat like girl!? Could that be… Oh no, she's just a puny hybrid between a feline and human girl…**_

_**This world, in Void's opinion, seemed a little too much… Anime like… So to speak.**_

_**He dismissed it fairly rapidly and proceed with his voyage.**_

_**And then… It came this vision…**_

_**This time, it was not planet Terra Firma… It was some kind of a spaceship… In front of a little bright planet…**_

_**With a single huge tree on it.**_

_**That tree… Was a living, breathing person, as Void realized. A powerful yet, innocent being who was using its abilities to block a greater evil… But for how long?**_

_**For just the time someone else needed… To kill her.**_

_**Her? How did Void know it was a Her… And then, as another piece of his jig-sawed memory came into place, he realized who she was…**_

_**Her name was Cosmo… His own mother… The one he was born from… Only, this one, was not the Cosmo he remembered… She was this dimension's version of her… And she was as powerful as his real mother used to be…**_

_**And she was about to die…**_

_**She was about to sacrifice herself for the wellbeing of a whole galaxy... For some reason he couldn't understand.**_

_**And the one who should terminate her along with the very same menace she was blocking… Was none other than that spaceship's own captain and creator, which happened to be in deep love with her…**_

_**This dimension's Tails.**_

_**He was alone on his captain's chair… Alone and consumed by his own tears, sorrow and grief… Unable to push the fatal button… The trigger of her certain demise… The trigger of this ungrateful galaxy's salvation.**_

_**He cried, he pleaded Cosmo to be with him… To not depart from him… Her voice echoed through his mind…**_

_**Asking him to do it… Because, that right there, was her destiny.**_

**"… _Bullshit!" Void muttered within himself._**

_**But it was too late… Through tears and screams… Through pain and sadness… Through love and death… The button was pushed… The cannon was activated… And the two golden super hedgehog beings that, for some reason, were inside of it, were shot right through the planet…**_

_**Shattering it...**_

_**Destroying it…**_

_**Erasing it from existence.**_

_**And so… It was over. Cosmo was no more… Leaving a broken fox alone in his own living hell.**_

_**Void was eyes widened… Unable even to think. He just witnessed the tragic conclusion of a tragic love story… And why? Because she thought it was her destiny to do it? **_

_**Again… It was bullshit… To drop a life like that because of a credence… Then again, he had no rights to judge her choice…**_

_**In the end… No one had it. **_

_**The question remained though… It's been her choice… Someone else's choice… Or her believes' choice?**_

_**And the answer was always the same: He was not bound to know it… **_

_**Life is Chaos.**_

_**Apparently, his journey was about to end… A portal opened itself right in front of him… He could finally escape the lifeless shadows this pure nothingness was engulfed with… **_

_**Escape this ominous sense of finality and rejoin with life again… And perhaps, just perhaps, with the very object of his quest…**_

_**The object of his crow-like black dreams… His Blaze.**_

_**And so… He left the namesake emptiness he was in… And re-entered Life…**_

_**Or so he thought.**_

* * *

He looked around… He looked right and left, up and down, and everywhere the spectacle was just the same… He found a blaze, only not his own…

He found a blaze of a world… A wasteland drowned in constant flames and lava reefs… A burning Inferno of eternal sufferance… A flaming tomb.

He stood on the peak of a tall skeleton of a building, observing this world… Feeling its torment and experiencing its trauma.

The omnipresent voice of his master, Dark Gaia, told him that this dimension has been damned by the so-called Flames of Disaster… At the mention of such name, something clicked inside the mind of the young Seedrian…

In his world, Blaze has been considered a cursed being… The Beast of Flames itself… The Bakeneko.

And he has been the one who healed her… With his powers… With his love.

He had doubts no more. She ended up here… How did she do it, he didn't know… Not even his master knew…

It… Just… Happened.

This was it. All he's been forced to go through and through out… All he's suffered… All the people he murdered… All of this things were meant to bring him here…

He was about to find her again… He was about to hug her and be with her, once again.

He was…

"Hello?"

Void abruptly snapped out of his thoughts and immediately turned his head towards the new comer…

And there she was… Right in front of him…

Young…

Beautiful…

Perfect.

His princess, Blaze the Cat, was there and for the first time from Chaos knows when, Void felt a whole new emotion filling his soul… He felt happiness.

"Who are you?" She asked.

And then… Void's world shattered like a broken vase… His broken being.

* * *

_**S**__**till every night I burn**_

_****_

Every night I scream your name

Every night I burn

Every night the dream's the same

Every night I burn

Waiting for my only friend

Every night I burn

Waiting for the world to end


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

_**J**__**ust paint your face and shadow smile**_

_****_

Slipping me away from you

Oh it doesn't matter how you hide

Find you if we're wanting to

So slide back down and close your eyes

Sleep awhile - you must be tired

* * *

_**It has been said… Certain beings are made to suffer… It was not a matter of Fate… Nor a matter of luck… **_

_**There were things that, no matter the odds… No matter the probabilities… They would just… Keep… Happening.**_

_**They would just keep in coming… Keep in being thrown towards their chosen targets and hit them without a second thoughts… Hurting them… Killing them from the inside… **_

_**Just for the heck of it… **_

_**Certain characters happened to be in such tight spot and there's nothing they could do about it…**_

_**Even though they would eventually escape from their miseries… The ominous cursed shadows would engulf them no matter how far they would run… No matter how desperately they would fight…**_

_**Sufferance shall always find its prey… And unmercifully erode the void within their souls to the point of no return…**_

_**To the point in which such hurtful soul would be pushed… To get it over with.**_

_**To just rest… To sleep awhile… To sleep forever… To stop the pain once and for all…**_

_**To leave the great illusion of Life… And Love… And to embrace Death.**_

_**Because this… Seemed to be the only solution over such torment.**_

_**Because this… Seemed to be the only getaway from the merciless shadows… From the twisted torment of a broken heart… From the void within.**_

_**Void stood still, on his spot… Feeling all of this… 100 times worse. **_

_**He managed to find her… He managed to go through all of his pain and soul wounds… He killed and almost get himself killed… Just for seeing her again…**_

_**Just for feeling her love again.**_

_**And now that he finally found her… She didn't even recognize him.**_

_**He suddenly felt… The un-mistakable noise of his heart breaking… He felt it… Along with the entire fabric of his own being crashing for good…**_

_**He became what he feared the most… The reflex of his own name… Not just a void…**_

_**He was now The Void… He didn't just have an emptiness inside his soul… The emptiness took the place of the soul…**_

_**Leaving him to be just a rotten piece of flesh without emotions… Without feelings… Without life.**_

_**An empty shell… Filled by darkness… The full amount of the darkness his current master embodied…**_

_**In a sort of way, he was now the perfect agent a God like Dark Gaia could ever ask for… And, ironically enough, even the God himself… Felt pity towards him… **_

_**Dark Gaia was the metaphorical and physical representation of this world's dark feelings and sorrows… Of all the negativity… Of all the evil… But then again, he didn't choose to be that way, did he? **_

_**It happened and he was just doing his job… To bring sufferance to the world… Yet, this chaotic dimensional mess had a balance that shouldn't be broken…**_

_**Chaos was its name… And Dark Gaia was just a part of it… He was not above it. **_

_**The uncontrollable sheer amount of chaos energy that the universe was engulfed with… Was mirrored by the amount of emotions any living being had… **_

_**We live in a chaotic universe and, idealistically speaking, there is a whole chaotic universe inside us…**_

_**All kind of feelings… All kind of sentiments… From Love to Hate… From Happiness to Sadness… All of them, despite being absolutely loosed and escaping the boundaries of Logic and Rationality… They were perfectly balanced…**_

_**Simply because… They would make an individual's soul… They would make it a Whole.**_

_**Even the aforementioned emptiness was part of it… It was there to remind everybody that they owned a soul… And therefore, due to the unbalanced balance of Chaos… They would suffer as well as they would love.**_

_**They would feel…**_

_**And that's pretty much it.**_

_**Perhaps, now you can start to understand… Or even just to imagine… What could be like not having a soul…**_

_**Not being a whole… Not having the opportunity to live.**_

_**This was the current condition of the being known as his own sufferance…**_

_**This was the condition of Void.**_

_**And it all happened because of three simple words…**_

"_**Who are you?" She asked him, breaking him for good.**_

… _**Certain characters are meant to suffer… Because they couldn't help it… Because a sadistic author wanted it… Or maybe even something more…**_

_**Again… We are not bound to know. It's all Chaos for a reason, you know?**_

_**Not even Dark Gaia, who was supposed to be an omniscient God… Embodiment of a planet's will, who could exist through the infinite dimensions contemporarily… Not even him, could know the Truth about Life (if there was one, of course) because, in the end, Earth was just an insignificant microbe compared to the immensity of the universe…**_

_**Therefore even he could not explain how a single living being like his current unwilling servant could turn into such a soulless freak because of betrayed love… It shouldn't be possible…**_

_**But it happened anyway…**_

_**And I need to do something about it! **_

_**I'm this world's Love for a reason, after all!**_

* * *

His blackened eyes were watching but his brain paid no attention whatsoever…

Blaze stood in front of him… Side by side to his new love… This dimension's Silver the Hedgehog.

"Who's he?" The namesake rodent would occasionally ask to his companion.

"I don't know…" She would respond, absent mindedly.

And then… Void would finally snap.

And the hollow space that once was his soul… Started to be filled… With pure will of destruction.

Something that went beyond rage… Something that went beyond emotions themselves… Just pure, untainted lust for blood… The same his body experienced before… And his mind stayed separated.

Suddenly, his hair grew long and white and his claws became bigger… And his dark, fallen angel like form, once again took the place of his original appearance.

If he would have had an ominous Latin theme song, he would have looked like the utter powerful final boss of an RPG videogame…

Without any hesitation… Without any feeling whatsoever… He attacked.

He slashed the flesh…

He broke the bones…

He spilled the blood…

He killed them.

And the now unrecognizable and mutilated corpses of two Mobians stood on the ground… Their blood was all over him.

And so… There came the scream.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!"

And this already doomed world shattered and collapsed into pure nothingness by the strength of it… The nothingness everything came from… The nothingness everything shall return to…

The nothingness he had inside.

He stood alone, suspended in nowhere.

He was back at his normal form… His hair were once again green and pointed and his hands were smaller… And the inside of his being mirrored the surroundings he was engulfed in.

Nothing mattered anymore… Nothing was important… When he's been stripped by the chance of feeling… He became this hollow shell, this phantom without consistence, this shadow of his former life.

He seemed to be fine with that… At least, now, the sorrow was over and he could finally sleep awhile… Sleep forever…

Alone.

_**This is NOT going to happen!**_

"What?" The Seedrian asked.

Suddenly… The Light came and the nothingness disappeared.

He saw an image… A very familiar image…

_**I will save you… My son.**_

There she was… The incarnation of the purest among emotions… The only one who could save him… His mother, Cosmo.

"M-mother?"

_**This is not your place, Void… Come with me.**_

Driven by new found emotions, he just did as he was told.

* * *

He was back in the place, the dimension, from which everything began… His crystallized realm… The place his master ordered him to reach in the first place… The Sanctuary.

He stood there, seemingly dumbfounded… Cosmo lay in front of him.

"You're not Cosmo, are you?" He suddenly asked.

She giggled.

"I am Dark Gaia's counterpart… My name is Light Gaia! I assumed this form to make you feel more comfortable but I can change it if you want." She sweetly answered.

Void shook his head, now realizing a couple of things…

"It has all been an illusion, hadn't it? My voyage through other dimensions… The loss of my memories… The meeting with that Tails and all… I've never left this dimension in the first place, right?"

She lowered her head in defeat.

"So… You've regained your memories, uh?"

"I remember everything." He abruptly replied.

She sighed.

"Why? Why did you put me through this hell? Why torturing my soul to the point of a breakdown? Why all this charade? Why me?" He demanded to know, his namesake eyes showing a reasonable amount of rage.

"Because… The Author wanted it… And we just played our roles… Why did he want it? I don't know… And I'm fairly sure of the fact that he didn't know either…"

Void tilted his head, clearly confused.

"So… The Truth is… I've been the puppet for some blasted writer?" He said, anger was showed in his expression.

"Not exactly… I guess that, in some deranged way, he was testing himself… Through your pain, he tried to discover himself, you could say… To mature as a person and as an author… Or maybe he just did it for the sadistic fun of it." Light Gaia took a long breath before adding: "After all, even Gods are not above the Chaos they created… If they created it at all… Even my brother and I are not above it, we were born with this planet… We did not create it… We were part of the Chaos… And the Author is part of it too. In other words, to put it bluntly… He writes… And that's that."

Void seemed even more confused right now.

"I don't understand."

"Exactly." She pointed out.

Void crossed his arms.

"So, what do I do now? It seems that I have no free will at all…"

"Perhaps… Or perhaps it's your sheer determination that saved you from a tragic fate… Since the Author couldn't find the further strength to torture you even more… Nobody's flawless after all."

At this Void's face lightened up.

"So… I'm going to have a happy ending?"

Light Gaia frowned.

"Well… Not exactly. Look…" Light Gaia pointed towards the direction of a very familiar ice coffin…

Void recognized it at once.

"When she used her flames to transport herself and you to this dimension in order to save your life… She had to sacrifice her own life force."

Slowly, the young Seedrian got closer to the majestic frozen stone in which his one and only love was resting in it… He put his ugly excuse of a hand on it… Feeling her.

A few tears descended from Void's not-so empty eyes.

"Is there a way to awake her?" He asked.

The God behind him just smiled.

"Do you know what this dimension really is?" She answered with a question of her own.

Void shook his head, not diverting his gaze from the frozen form of Blaze the Cat. Light Gaia continued.

"This place, or should I say non-place… Was not created by Ixis Naugus… He only happened to be entrapped inside of it and deluded himself into believe that he actually modeled it at his own image… In reality, this dimension in nothing more and nothing less than…" He paused to add some suspense then finished. "… The representation of the collective subconscious!"

And now, Void's attention has been definitely caught. He slowly turned his head towards his godly guest… His expression betrayed a fair amount of stupor.

She started her tale.

* * *

_**Just like all the universe's chaos energies need the Master Emerald to maintain their chaotic balance… All living beings' emotions, dreams, thoughts and ideas… All of them need a place in which they could be collected… Recreated… And released into the minds and souls of newly born beings, ready to commence their new lives… **_

**_This place is what makes us all similar yet, unique at the same time… It was born with the very first thought…__ And has grown ever since… _**

**_And all thanks__ to a powerful and mysterious God gem known as… The Precioustone… The Master Emerald of everyone's dreams… The controller of the Chaos within our soul… Which is the mirror image of this universe's Chaos…_**

_**There are infinite dimensions… Worlds among other worlds… And people who dreams… Who wishes… Who love… And suffer…**_

_**People who feel…**_

_**And all of them are linked to this place, or should I say non-place…**_

_**The one place in which everyone's mind and soul are equal… Yet different at the same time…**_

_**You have known this dimension as Sanctuary… But we know it with another name… **_

_**Maginary World.**_

* * *

Void was mouth agape.

"So… It is all an illusion?" He naively asked.

"Are emotions and feelings illusions?" She asked back.

That was a good point.

A sudden realization hit Void's mind.

"So, basically… You can do everything here, can't you?" He eagerly asked.

Maginary World was what any conflicted writer could ever wish for… The possibility of doing and creating everything from zero… No more writer's blocks… No more Chaos…

"It would only be an illusion_… _I'm sorry Void. You can't save a life here… Because this world is real… It is real as emotions are."

He frowned quite a bit… As well as myself.

"But… If you would become the official guardian of the Precioustone and all the people's hopes and dreams… Then you could find a way to restore her life… Somehow, someway…" She ultimately added.

The Seedrian exited his frown and suddenly smirked.

"That's curious… In my dream, when Dark Gaia chose me as his servant he wanted me to reach this place and collect the Precioustone for whatever reason… Now I wonder… How much of that dream was illusive?" He asked, showing a smart expression.

Light Gaia just chuckled within herself.

"Ehe… I guess you'll never know." She responded, still chuckling.

Void went serious, determination clear in his eyes.

"I'll do it." He simply said.

"So be it." She muttered back.

And so…

The young Seedrian became the ruler and guardian of Maginary World…

Light Gaia rejoined her dark brother inside the core of planet Terra Firma… Annoying him to death.

All the various Tailses and Sonics in the various dimensions had their own stories…

And me? I introduced the ending credits… Enjoy!

* * *

**_When every night I burn_**

**_Every night I call your name_**

**_Every night I burn_**

_**Every night I fall again**_

And so it began… Void's rulership over this world… He would feel all the wonderful feelings and emotions that would occasionally come to him… And to the majestic, giant purple stone besides him… And yet, he would also suffer because of her… And in doing so, he would remember that he was alive… That he had a soul.

And reinforced by such strength… He would burn inside… With passion and hope.

**_Every night I burn_**

**_Scream the animal screams_**

_**Every night I burn**_

_**Dream the crow black dream**_

_**Dream the crow black dream**_

And so he would dream… He would see her… He would dream of the two of them, one day, finally reunited… He would feel the urge to scream her name… And so he did.

And again, he would feel alive by doing so…

_**Still every night I burn, every night I scream your name.**_

_**Every night I burn, Every night the dream's the same.**_

And he would dream every night… Somehow knowing that their moment would arrive… Despite the adversities of Life.

When awake, he would look at her coffin… She would look peaceful and beautiful as ever… He would smile.

**_Every night I burn, screaming the animal scream_**

**_Every night I burn, dreaming the crow-black dream. yeah, yeah_**

_**Dreaming the crow-black dream...**_

And there he stood… And there he would be…

To remember to everybody who would ever dream or feel…

That they were alive, that they had a soul… That they could love… As well as they could suffer…

Because he was the void that lay inside our souls…

He was the inevitable emptiness caused by the so-called negative yet, useful emotions…

He was the indispensable dark side that makes all us whole.

He

Was

The Void Within

**The End **


End file.
